


late at night, when I close my eyes, the quiet scares me

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 06:18:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10825509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: Here they call him Fitz.One of SHIELD’s best scientists. Someone who is supposed to be on the same side as him. Except all Grant can see is the former Head of Hydra.





	late at night, when I close my eyes, the quiet scares me

**Author's Note:**

> over on twitter i offered to write fic in exchange for reaction gifs of aida teleport-ing away from all her problems, which was tbc such a good decision, this slightly angsty fic is the result. ended up more pre-slash than shippy, to the prompt of "framework!ward is in the real world now, and has a confrontation with post-framework!fitz"

This world is different than his own. 

_ Real  _ is the world Skye - no,  _ Daisy,  _ she’s called Daisy here - uses, before she goes on to insist that his world the only world he had ever known was nothing more than a computer program created by Madame Hydra. 

Or AIDA as they like to call her, with disgust in their voices.  

Or  _ Ophelia  _ as the Doctor still calls her, before stopping himself and looking ashamed. 

He isn’t sure he believes it.

That his world, his entire existence was nothing more than a computer program until they brought him to the otherside. 

The multiverse theory makes more sense, but when Grant brings it up the first time and is shot down so quickly, he keeps his figures it’s better to just let the topic rest and move on. All that matters is that he is here now, in a world where SHIELD won, where there’s actual superheroes and where nothing seems to make sense anymore. 

It’s the sort of thought that keeps him lying awake at night when he should be thinking. 

The SHIELD bunks on this world are more spacious, an entire room to himself, no refugees scrambling for space. It should help with the insomnia, but his bed feels too big and empty and Grant’s still not sure what he is doing here. 

Or why he can’t go back to his own world. 

He gives up around the time his clock says one am, pushing himself up out of bed with the intention to get a midnight snack. There was something about eating waffles in the middle of the night that always managed to make him feel a little bit better. 

Comforts from his academy days. From the missions he used to run with Victoria where she’d down three cups of coffee while Grant emptied a box of off brand waffles. 

Comfort food was good on nights like this. 

Though this world seems unwilling to offer him any sort of comfort. 

He stops in the doorway, because the Doctor is in the kitchen, and apparently Grant can’t escape his nightmares now. 

There was a reason he hadn’t wanted to fall asleep even if he could, and that reason wore a human face. 

The Doctor.

Here they call him  _ Fitz _ . 

One of SHIELD’s best scientists. Someone who is supposed to be on the same side as him working towards the same goal though Grant has a hard time believing that. 

Except all Grant can see is the former Head of Hydra, who had tortured people Grant cared about and upon whose orders  _ Grant  _ hurt innocent people. 

He knows rationally that the look of distrust and displeasure that crosses his face each time he and the Doctor end up in the same room, is the same look that everyone else on the SHIELD team gets when they look at him.

Blaming him for the sins of this Earth’s version of Grant Ward.

The Hydra spy who betrayed the team. 

He looked up this world’s version of himself before: the child arsonist who was recruited by Hydra, who would eventually burn his whole family alive, go onto become one of the heads of Hydra, and eventually get possessed by a very evil tentacled inhuman. 

Not a good life. 

He still can’t believe it, can’t believe that that would ever be him, that he would ever join Hydra, but Simmons looks at him like the most vile of pests and Daisy sometimes jumps when he enters a room too quietly and even Coulson who had treated him with kindness back in his own world pulls him off missions here and calls him a  _ risk _ . 

But he knows it's the reality here.

The only version of Grant they have ever known.

Because when the Doctor meets his eyes it isn’t with the cool and practiced mannerisms of the head of Hydra, but a sleep deprived man with messed up hair and red rimmed eyes that held a hint of panic for a brief moment. 

As if Grant was the monster here. 

It’s silent for a while, both of them staring at each other, unwilling to move, but the a tea kettle whistles and the Doctor moves and Grant plans on heading back to his room, but a voice stops him, “You don’t have to go. Unless - Unless you want to, I can’t stop you I just - tea. Would you like a cup of tea?”

Who would believe that the Doctor would be here offering Grant a cup of tea? 

Certainly, not him. 

He doesn’t know how to reply, not until the Doctor is half way reaching for a second cup and turns back around, “Ward, tea?”

What’s the worse that can happen? 

He’s already living with plenty of demons in a world that barely wants him. 

“Sure.” 

The Doctor nods at this. It’s a familiar motion, one he’s seen before, but it’s not dismissive in this world, just sort of accepting and soft. 

Everything about this world’s Doctor is  _ soft _ .

The way he talks.

The sweaters he wears. 

The brush of his finger tips against the back of Grant’s hand as he offers over the cup of tea.

It’s too hot to drink, but it warms his hands. 

A small comfort. 

“Can’t sleep or bad dreams?”

The question is so normal, it gives Grant a second of pause, “What?”

The Doctor blinks at him in a sort of bleary way, but doesn’t repeat himself. Instead he just speaks, open and honest, as if Grant asked. 

“I’ve got bad dream, really bad, keep seeing AIDA and falling and hating so much and-” a sort of broken choked off noise, as if he’s forgotten how words work, “-And it’s like drowning all over again.”

He knows that feeling. 

Maybe doesn’t understand the context.

Maybe doesn’t believe that the Doctor of all people can dream, but he’s human surely he must, and this softer version who still has the weariness of someone used to crying in his features, must dream worse than others. 

“Drowning?” 

The Doctor makes a sort of half noise, “You dropped me and Jemma in an ocean once, left us for dead.” 

It’s not said as something to guilt him.

But a statement of fact.

Another crime committed by this world’s version of him. 

A part of Grant wants to apologize, apologize for something he hasn’t done. Like he did to Daisy and Jemma, with varying amounts of success, but this is different. 

“You made me kill my mentor.,” Grant says instead, “Called her a traitor to Hydra, so I had to shoot her point blank like it was nothing to prove my loyalty.” 

He’s not expecting an apology.

Not when he hadn’t gotten one himself.

Maybe there would be some sort of catharsis. 

A comparison of their scars, of what they’ve done to each other.

But the Doctor just freezes, a pale horrified look crossing his face, hands shaking as they set down his cup of tea. A voice so deathly quiet that Grant barely hears it when he says, “I remember that.”

“You do?” 

He nods, slowly but steadily.

It’s no longer a familiar nod. 

“It comes back in flashes, everything she made me do, even if it wasn’t - wasn’t real it feels so real and-”

“It was real to me.” 

It’s a cruel jab. 

But a true one. 

The notion of a world being real, of what exactly the world he came from is still lost of Grant. But he is here and alive and this is real, this moment, sitting in a kitchen in another world, drinking a cup of tea that had been handed over as a peace offering. 

This is real life. 

As real as it will ever get. 

“I know, and I’ll never forgive myself for that. For all that I -” he reaches up to rub at his eyes, and Grant isn’t sure that he can be here any longer.

Monsters aren’t supposed to be human.

But can he really call it monster, when the person standing in front of him, the broken man that Grant feels himself drawn to despite of his nightmares, had just as much control over what he did in that world as what control Grant had over this world’s version of himself.

No, not a monster.

Just a man, who had hands that shook when confronted with his actions.

Who had nightmares that kept him up in the middle of the night.

Who had offered Grant a respite from the rest of the world. 

He words find their way to his lips before he can even think them through, can really think of the implications. “It wasn’t you.” 

But when the Doctor - no, not the Doctor here, not anymore, his name is _ Fitz _ \-  meets his eyes once more, he knows that they were true. 

  
  
  
  



End file.
